


paled in the wake of you

by Hirikka



Series: speak of destiny as if it was fixed [2]
Category: The Witcher (TV), Wiedźmin | The Witcher - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Daemon Separation, Daemon Settling, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-19
Updated: 2020-04-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 23:54:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,003
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23725669
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hirikka/pseuds/Hirikka
Summary: Lambert and Tzila over the years.
Series: speak of destiny as if it was fixed [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1675786
Comments: 18
Kudos: 355





	paled in the wake of you

It would have been better if his father had died. He had been gone for two days, and Lambert saw the tension draining from his mother's shoulders. He and Tzila raced about the house, playful and, for once, not afraid of angering his father. It was the last moment of peace he would know for years.

They were outside. Lambert sat near his mother as she weeded their small garden, watching as Tzila swooped through the air, flitting through different bird forms. The tread of heavy footsteps made them all freeze for a moment. Tzila darted down to Lambert, changing into a mouse and hiding in his pocket. His father was returning, followed by a stranger. 

The stranger was a witcher who had saved his father. In return, his father had given him the law of surprise. Had given him Lambert.

It would have been better if the witcher hadn’t arrived in time. 

Lambert was sullen and silent as the witcher threw him up onto his horse. He could hear his mother’s desperate protests, but the witcher didn’t seem to care, emotionless as he rode away.

Lambert glanced back and saw his mother on her knees, clutching at her daemon as she cried. His father had already gone inside the house.

**

“He doesn’t have a daemon,” Tzila whispered to Lambert, trembling.

Lambert nodded, clutching her close to his chest.

The man who had claimed him was silent and watchful. Lambert was too afraid to ask what was to become of him. 

**

The days blurred together, but eventually they reached the keep of the witchers. Lambert was informed that he was to  _ become  _ a witcher. 

He was one of the youngest children there, and the training was brutal. There were a few older boys, also in training, and they did have daemons. None of the adults did. Lambert and Tzila were too scared to ask why that was. None of their teachers told them. 

As they grew older and stronger, they almost forgot about the strange lack of daemons. They grew used to the sight of their teachers alone, without a daemon.

**

Lambert and Tzila weren’t  _ happy  _ to be at Kear Morhen, but they had settled into an almost comfortable routine. He liked Eskel and Geralt, even if the latter could be a bit of an asshole. Of course, just as he was starting to feel slightly less miserable, things changed again.

Geralt and Eskel were a few years older than him, and they were being sent to the Trial of the Desert. The trial that took away daemons. None of the boys knew _exactly_ what that trial entailed, but they knew it was one of the deadliest trials. Many never returned. Those that did were _alone_ , their daemons never seen again.

“We could run away,” Lambert suggested, clutching at Eskel’s sleeve. “The three of us are strong enough; we could make it.” 

Eskel had smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “They would find us, Lambert. It would just make things worse.”

“We’ll survive,” Geralt had grunted, sounding confident and unafraid, but he was clutching at his daemon’s fur.

Lambert had raged in his room after they were gone, once again cursing destiny for bringing him to this place. Putting him on this path.

**

Geralt and Eskel returned. Three other boys who had been taken at the same time did not. 

They were changed. Harder. There was something  _ empty  _ in their eyes. 

“We could try to go by ourselves?” Tzila suggested, but they both knew they wouldn’t make it. If the monsters in the valley didn’t take them, the other witchers would find them. 

There was no escape.

**

Lambert was one of the youngest witchers in training. When it was his time for the trial, he went alone. 

As he stepped out onto the scarred landscape, he felt as though his heart was being torn from his chest. More painful than any of the mutations he had gone through. 

The worst part was Tzila’s desperate, pained cries, unable to make it to him. 

Lambert thought to turn back once, twice, half a dozen times before he had gone far enough that he could no longer hear Tzila. He didn’t stop. 

When he collapsed at Vessimir’s feet on the far side, he felt defeated. There was no turning back now, no options beyond the Path. 

He threw himself into his training, hoping to forget the pain, the loneliness in his exhaustion.

**

They were all kept together in a room in the heart of the mountain, daemons without their other halves. Lost and alone and confused. 

**

When Kaer Morhen was attacked, Lambert fought with everything he had to defend it. So many died, all the trainees and most of the teachers, and when the fight was done, they stood in a ruined keep, their numbers decimated. Lambert felt a sort of grim satisfaction - at least those children wouldn’t have to live without their souls. It was a small comfort as he helped to bury the bodies, but small comforts were all he had left.

**

Tzila heard the distant sounds of fighting. She watched as all around her daemons awoke - some for the first time in years - only to dissolve into a cloud of golden dust. She was afraid and  _ angry.  _ They should be out there; they should be able to go and help. They shouldn’t be  _ dying  _ like this.

After, in the silence, a white wolf stood and shook the dust from a collapsed section of the wall off herself. She glanced back at the other daemons, golden eyes flashing a challenge. Tzila watched as she scrambled up and out of their prison. Changing into the form of a crow, Tzila flew after her.

The halls of the castle were empty. The wolf didn’t speak, and neither did Tzila as they made their way through the abandoned fortress until they were outside, breathing the fresh mountain air for the first time in years. 

The wolf howled, joyful, and ran into the forest. Tzila followed for a while, until a tugging in her heart urged her in another direction. She changed forms, a peregrine, a cheetah, a horse, keeping her pace fast. She was determined as she traveled, trusting in her instincts to lead her home. To lead her to him. 

She lost track of the days, but finally -  _ finally _ \- she found him. He was sitting alone at a small campfire deep in the woods, older, drawn, thin, and wary. She changed again, a dog form that she had enjoyed when they were younger, and bounded to his side.

“Tzila?” he asked, eyes wide, shocked and unsure. 

“Lambert, my heart,” she whispered, pressing close. 

He let out a quiet sob, burying his face into her fur.

**

Having Tzila back was a gift that Lambert was not going to argue with. Destiny might have fucked him when it forced him onto this path, so returning Tzila to him was the least it could do to make up for it. 

When she had first found Lambert, she hadn’t settled; she tried a few different forms to see what suited them now. Larger creatures meant that she had to wait in the forest when Lambert went into town - neither wanted to find out how people would react to the sight of a witcher with a daemon. 

They didn’t enjoy even the brief separations, so she started taking smaller forms that were easier to hide away when they were around others.

Finally, three months after they were reunited, she settled. A falconet. She couldn’t help Lambert fight monsters, but her eyes were sharper than his, even with the mutations. When they were in towns, she would hide in his pocket. When they were hunting, she could fly ahead to scout.

It wasn’t perfect, but it was a comfort not to have to walk the Path alone. 

**

Lambert both anticipated and feared the first winter after Tzila's return. They knew at least one other daemon had gotten out, the white wolf, but he wasn't sure which of his brothers she belonged to.

Tzila traveled with him until they were a few miles from the keep, and she took off. She would find a place to hide away from enhanced eyes and come to his room at night. He didn't trust himself to be able to smuggle her in directly. Once again, they were glad for the wings of her settled form.

He was one of the first to arrive. Nobody mentioned the escape of any daemons, and he didn't see the wolf. 

Tzila mostly stayed in his room, only accompanying him when he went out for supplies alone. If he spent more time than usual in his room that year, well, they were all still getting used to the empty spaces that filled the castle after last year's battle.

**

A week after they arrived, Lambert and Tzila snuck out of their room in the middle of the night and descended into the depths of the keep.

“Are you sure?” Lambert whispered.

“I want to know what happened to them,” Tzila hissed.

Lambert didn’t try to argue further, just following her directions until they reached the end of a hall. A large door stood ajar next to a crumbled section of wall. 

Tzila darted into the room beyond. Lambert followed more cautiously. It didn’t matter; the room beyond was empty. It had the feel of a place long abandoned. 

“Did they all leave?” Lambert asked when Tzila returned to him. She shuffled closer on his shoulder, pressing against his neck.

“I don’t think so. There might have been others who would have wanted to go, but some didn’t have the strength or will. I think they were moved.”

Lambert sighed. “I suppose it was too much to hope that they had all followed your excellent example.”

Tzila ruffled her feathers, pleased at the compliment, but he could sense her unhappiness at their lack of success. 

**

By the time Lambert had been there for a few weeks, all of his surviving brothers had returned. The white wolf had not. Tzila had searched the keep to see if she was hiding somewhere but had seen no sign of her.

“Maybe she didn’t find him,” Lambert suggested, hoping that would settle Tzila’s nervous fluttering. 

“I suppose” Tzila landed on the edge of his window. “Do you think she’ll come in the winter?”

“Perhaps.”

**

She didn’t appear that winter. Or any of the winters that followed. Tzila still fretted over the other daemon sometimes - she felt a kinship with the wolf - but as the years passed, it seemed less and less likely that the wolf had survived.

**

Lambert couldn’t remember the exact time he had first heard stories about the ‘White Wolf,’ but he did notice a slow change in attitude. People seemed less reluctant to approach him with jobs and the insults lessened. They didn’t stop, of course, but it seemed that Geralt had somehow polished up his reputation, and now people were starting to see witchers as the friends of humanity.

“Do you think it’s her?” Tzila asked, interrupting Lambert’s humming. That damn ‘Toss a Coin’ song had been stuck in his head for weeks.

“What?”

“Do you think she found Geralt? That might be why he’s being called the white wolf?” Tzila sounded hopeful.

“Song doesn’t mention a daemon.” Geralt didn’t seem like the type to disobey Witcher edicts by traveling with his daemon, let alone enough for her to have been seen.

“The song,” Tzila said slowly, “does not seem entirely accurate.”

“Fair,” Lambert agreed. “Hard to imagine anyone other than Eskel referring to Geralt as a friend.”

**

That winter, he and Tzila both kept an eye out for the wolf. Lambert watched Geralt as closely as he could without drawing suspicions. Tzila often flew patrols around the keep, looking to see if the white wolf was still in the woods around the fort.

They saw no sign of her. 

It would be many years before they saw the white wolf again.

**Author's Note:**

> Title is from the song "Wolves" by the Ballroom Dancers  
> Tzila's settled [form](https://live.staticflickr.com/829/41109052105_2db51b5f61_b.jpg)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has commented/left kudos on interconnected! I really love hearing from all of you!  
> Come say hi on [tumblr!](https://hirikka.tumblr.com/)


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